(4)Cloud Strife vs (5)Crono (Legends Bracket) 2018
Ulti's Analysis A common theme that kept popping up pre-contest was trying to figure out which match Cloud would lose. He's been looking vulnerable for years in these things and Final Fantasy 7 has looked like trash for a decade. I myself have gotten caught up in this, mainly because I picked the Squirtle loss and loved that random Trainers > FF7 upset we got as a bonus match in the Rivalry Rumble. For the curious, I had Cloud losing to Monika (lol) one round later and then losing to Link in the losers bracket. Shows what I know! What we all forgot is that Cloud appearing in Super Smash Bros is a huge deal, and staved off a lot of his erosion. Beginning with this match (some would say the Bowser match but I disagree), there was a lot of hype about Cloud losing. Crono's case was pretty obvious, too, given how insane Chrono Trigger looked in 2015. This was the first time these two had ever faced each other 1 on 1, too, which was really neat. Unfortunately for everyone, this match was a typical Final Fantasy 7 match. Close to 5 minutes, then FF7 wins like it always does lol. There are actually people who think FF7 wins every contest, which is so weird. The hope for Crono died in about 10 minutes, and given Cloud would end up getting 57% here, this was actually a fantastic match for the guy. Most people did not see him doing this well: http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k18&type=match&match=134 This wasn't SFF, either, because we've seen that Final Fantasy slash Square doesn't really SFF itself outside of very obvious cases. This was just Cloud taking his newfound Smash Bros strength and putting an old-school ass whuppin on a pretender. I also want everyone to remember that this was a sprite round match. These two would have a rematch in a few days without sprites that would prove me right once and for all that sprites don't make one damn bit of difference and that all the crybabies who spent 2 weeks bitching about them would leave this contest looking unbelievably dumb. Safer777's Analysis There was a small debate that Crono would be able to win. But Cloud won easily. I still I am baffled that Crono is so strong after all these years with only 1 game! The question though is that is Cloud the strongest Non Nintendo Character? Hard to say. I think Snake beats him. And from Nintendo characters Mario and Samus may beat him? Zelda might too? To tell the truth Link is the only one that surely beats him. Still we will have another Cloud VS Link match. I think this is like the 69th time they fight? Or their games? Can't wait to see what will happen! Tsunami's Analysis Well, just one match after saying that we should stop talking about the Noble Nine, I have no choice but to talk about the Noble Nine! Well, not exactly. What I said in the last match was that we should stop using the Noble Nine as a shorthand for "the most elite characters who will never lose to anyone other than each other unless there's weird rally shit." This was actually a long-awaited match, one that we honestly probably should've seen way back in the CJayC days but even with all the SFF matches that CJay liked to set up he never sent the protagonists of the two most well-regarded Square RPGs to face each other, because Mario vs. Crono was already a meme by the time the SFF debacle of '04 took place. (I'm still not sure what I think of FFVII, because I'm too addicted to FE:TH to go back to my FFVII playthrough. I didn't like CT too much when I first played it but I want to give it a second chance after having played and enjoyed FFVI.) But instead, their only meeting was in the fourway finale of the 2008 contest, where Crono provided just enough LFF to allow Snake to upset Cloud for second place. As for what this result meant...the instinctive result was to say that it meant that FFVII really was weakening and that it went all the way to the top (the irony being that Sephiroth's weakness was exposed by a fellow FFVII character, but "porn rallies"), since the last time we'd seen Crono, he looked like he'd have probably struggled to beat Pikachu even without Magus LFFing him. What most of the board wanted it to be, on the other hand, was that CT's run through the Games Contest wasn't just a case of Games =/= Characters and that the CT crew was back. And the thing is, there was a good case for it. Not one Oracle picked Magus to lose by as little as he did (though some of them did predict him to win outright), and the two highest picks for Frog in his first match were the two closest. The only question is...why? Unlike fellow Squaresoft RPGs FFVI and SMRPG, CT wasn't included on the SNES Classic. It hasn't received a new series on Netflix like Castlevania did (also a franchise with representation on the SNESC). Crono hasn't even gotten into Smash Ultimate! There is no good reason why CT's plummet should have stopped, and yet, it seemed to have done so. Oh, wait, yes there was. The ever-dwindling vote totals. This site hardly gets any traffic normally, with contests representing an uptick due to social media spreading the word--but even then, it probably only draws in hardcore old-school gamers like the ones who've been sticking around all these years on Board 8. The hardcore fanbase that's still stuck in the 1990s is the only one still voting. So we're probably going to see whatever representatives of ancient franchises had new releases this past decade dominate the upcoming GotD. (I mean granted, we all already crowned Breath of the Wild the moment it came out, but it's even more obvious now.) Category:2018 Contest Matches